5+ years of experience, top-rated on Upwork, built a real SaaS product, 3.65 CGPA from FAST and still unemployed. I genuinely don’t know what I’m doing wrong anymore.
I’m in my last semester at FAST NUCES Lahore with a 3.65 CGPA. I have 5+ years of web/mobile development experience and a Top Rated Upwork profile with 100% JSS and $9K+ earnings.
For the past 1.5 years, I worked on a product for a niche business industry. It solved a real operational problem, automated manual work, reduced errors completely, and genuinely saved companies huge amounts of time and effort. The businesses I targeted generate crores monthly, but when I priced my software at what I believed was already a minimal rate considering the value, they treated it like I was asking for something unreasonable.
At the same time, Upwork has become extremely difficult. I’ve spent thousands on connects before without getting work. My previous client engagement also ended recently due to their financial situation.
Since April, I’ve applied to 100+ companies. Good product companies are mostly on hiring freezes, and many local offers are far below what I used to make even part-time (70K for a dev as a full time, thats painful). What hurts the most is that I spent years grinding, used to spend 16 hours working while others around me enjoyed life, and now I’m the one sitting without work, without job, no interview calls or anything despite having experience, projects, and results to show. I am not jealous of my friends (May Allah give them more) but why is this happening with me?
I’m not posting this for sympathy. I genuinely want advice from people. Right now I feel mentally exhausted and honestly lost about what direction to take next.